Is Early Speech Situational? An Examination of Some Current Theories About the Relation of Early Utterances to the Context

Abstract

One of the conceptualisations of early speech is that the earliest utterances are situational, having the characteristics of a conditional response (or a sensori-motor action schema) which is elicited by the occurrence of highly specific situations (cf. Barrett, 1986; Bloom, 1973; Harris, Barrett, Jones, and Brookes, 1988; Harrison, 1972; Lock, 1980; McCune-Nicolich, 1981; Nelson, 1985). Early utterances are seen as holistic responses to complete, unanalysed physical and behavioural situations, rather than communicative acts expressing some mental content such as communicative intents. They are variously said to be prerepresentational sensori-motor action schemata (Corrigan, 1978); conditional responses (Harrison, 1972); accompaniments to the occurrence of particular actions or events (Barrett, 1989; Harris et al., 1988; McCune-Nicolich, 1981); ‘part of behavior complex that includes action as well as speech’ (Nelson, 1985, p. 33); performances of a ritualised action (Barrett, 1989) or of ‘sterile rituals’ (Harrison, 1972); they do not seem to serve a communicative purpose as such (Barrett, 1989); they are functionless and meaningless (Lucariello, Kyratzis, and Engel, 1986); they are ‘recipes for skilfully “knowing how” to perform some roughly appropriate sound in some apparently appropriate context’ (Dore, 1985, p. 35).